“Wine to me is passion.  It’s family and friends.  It’s warmth of heart and generosity of spirit.”

-Robert Mondavi

Late yesterday, the drinking world lost a true pioneer and Champion of Drinking.  Robert Mondavi, the first to build a post-prohibition winery and founding father of the California wine industry passed away.  He had the guts to do what few thought possible, and his actions helped turn California into one of the top-selling wine regions in the world.  If not for him, you’d probably never have heard of Napa Valley, Sonoma Valley, Paso Robles or any of the other wine producing regions in California.  He worked his entire life as an evangelist for the wine industry and pushed it forward in the name of great winemaking.

So if you’ve got a bottle of Mondavi that you’ve been waiting to open (or you could go out and buy one), tonight might be a good night to open it and toast to a man who was truly a Champion of Drinking.

via :: Robert Mondavi Winery

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 17th, 2008 at 3:49 pm and is filed under Champions of Drinking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Champions of Drinking: Robert Mondavi Dead at 94”

1. Champions of Drinking: Kiefer Sutherland | Kennesaw Night Life says:

   January 26, 2010 at 1:27 pm

   [...] here. Only three people have previously been granted the title, and two of them were wine pioneer Robert Mondavi and the lucky so-and-so who just happens to have my dream job, Zane Lamprey. But recent events, as [...]

   Reply